In the reversed Rankine cycle such as a heat pump, the heat calorie discharged from a condenser is generally determined by the heat calorie intaken to an evaporator and the amount of work of an compressor. Accordingly, conventional reversed Rankine cycle apparatus involves a problem in that if the heat calorie intaken to the evaporator is constant, a great amount of work has to be done by the compressor in order to increase the enthalpy in the higher temperature region and, in addition, no great coefficient of performance can be attained since the cycle takes a vertically extended configuration in the p.i diagram where the coolant is deeply brought into a super-cooling region. Furthermore, if the heat-endurance of the compressor is restricted, there is an inevitable limit for increasing the amount of work in order to increase the enthalpy.
While on the other hand, there has been known a vortex tube as a device of converting a gas supplied under a high pressure into a vortex stream at a high velocity, separating the same into higher and lower temperature components through energy separation and discharging them from two opposing exits. However, the vortex tube has hitherto been used for utilizing the separated gas on the lower temperature side while discharging the higher temperature component to the atmosphere, and there have been known no method and apparatus for intensifying heat by combining them to the reversed Rankine cycle as far as the present inventors know.
A primary object of this invention is to improve the performance of heat pumps or refrigerators or coolers by separating the superheated vapors of coolant rendered to high pressure and high temperature by the compressor in the reversed Rankine cycle into higher and lower temperature components through energy separation in the vortex tube thereby further raising the temperature of most part of the superheated vapors of the coolant.
Another object of this invention is to further increase the enthalpy, as well as protect the compressor in the reversed Rankine cycle by causing the heat generated from the compressor to be absorbed into the vapors of coolant separated by the vortex tube to the lower temperature side.